We have now completed 2 weeks of lent! Hooray! It has been a lot of fun so far. We have discovered farm shops and little local shops, delicious fresh foods and way more choice than I thought there would be.
The things that have been hardest to source have been recycled loo roll and our usual brand of tea. The loo roll problem has now been solved by asking the lovely chap who runs the farm shop to add Ecover loo roll to his order (he says it will probably come in by the weekend). The tea problem should be fine by next weekend too as the fair trade stall will be on at church on Sunday.
Also available at the fair trade stall will be some Easter eggs with imagery actually reflecting the Easter story: not something I think I've ever seen before. I think that will be fantastic!
In terms of our spending, so far we have not saved money, but we haven't overspent either. We seem to be spending almost exactly the same as before. Bearing in mind that this fortnight we spent a lot of time finding new shops and chatting to shopkeepers, and then feeling obliged to buy something from every one, I think we really could save money doing this. We have definitely bought a lot less silly impulse purchases that have not got used and gone off in the fridge!
I'm not saying that after Easter I'll never use a supermarket again. I will. Probably out of normal shopping hours. Probably I'll buy things I don't really need. But at this point I don't see us going back to the level of supermarket use we were at before.
This weekend I got a very shocking reminder of why we wanted to do this. A colleague posted a link on facebook to an article about someone's idea for dealing with the cruelty inherent in intensive chicken farming. Here is a link for those interested. Basically this guy is suggesting that, rather than improve the conditions for chickens, we should just remove half of their brains so they are not aware of being maltreated. While we're at it let's chop off their feet so we can pack more of them into a small space. We can input nutrients through a feeding tube and hygienically remove excrement in a similar way. There is a slight problem in that their muscles will not be in use so won't develop properly, but we can just give them electric shocks to stimulate them.
What an absolutely backwards way of dealing with the problem! It absolutely confirms my belief that a society where this seems like a good idea needs radical change. Surely we don't need meat to be so cheap that we have to decapitate the animals so we can ignore their welfare? Surely the answer is to live more sustainable lives consuming a healthier diet with food produced in a way that is fair to everyone, the chickens included?
I really want the world that our daughter, her children and their peers live out their lives in, to not look like that. I want them to know what is involved in the production and supply of their food and for that to sit well with their consciences.
